So I’m now 200ish miles into the cranks and they are what they are. To sum up the issues I had were:
Originally a 115 or 118 bottom bracket with spacers was recommended. Neither worked for me. With the 115 both crank arms hit the stays. With the 118 the arms would clear but the drive side crank arm would hit the chain when it was in the smallest cog. Ultimately a 122 worked for me.
The big ring is pretty badly out of true, so much that I have to adjust the front derailleur 3 times while shifting through the rear cassette while in the big ring. The ring isn’t any more or less out of true than their older TA counter parts but one of the big things that VO touted was that the rings were of high quality.
One of the crank arm bolts had a small burr of metal in it that prevented me from using it until grinding the piece out with a file.
The cranks ARE stiffer than their TA counter parts were, which is very nice.
I was a professional mechanic for several years, have rebuilt at least 50 bikes to sell on CL, have owned and swapped cranks on 25+ of my personal bikes and have NEVER run into as many issues as I did with the VO cranks. All that said they are on the bike now and working so there they will stay.
[quote=Sneaky Viking]I don’t really like when someone here goes out of their way to link our criticisms to the object of said criticisms.
But I read back through this thread and it is much less juvenile than most of the anonymous bashing we normally offer. There’s valid criticisms based on personal experience, as well as defense of products that users have liked (setback seatpost is universally agreed upon winner!) and of the service one can expect from a smallish e-commerce retailer.
So do with it what you will, Mr. Kulczycki. If you want to dismiss it as ‘yo dis sux brah,’ that misses a lot of the objective criticisms presented here, in an environment where people were having a conversation amongst themselves about real perceived deficiencies in your products.[/quote]
I hope there have in fact been meaningful customer service changes at VO. I’ve taken to placing orders with a LBS with a VO account rather than having to deal with the “blame the victim” headache I’ve found their CS team to be. The woman is/was especially aggravating - once when I called about one of those mysterious double charges that VO’s FAQ page says is totally normal (though I’ve never had it happen elsewhere), she really was rather short with me, and that experience stuck with me as a black mark on VO.
As an enduser, IMHO buying bike parts should be fun (not painful), if it isn’t, I’ll avoid your company unless I have absolutely no other alternative.
I called VO once to ask about the OD of bar (for brake lever compatibility) after not hearing back via email. the guy didnt know and he told me to hang on while he went to go find out. after a few minutes of waiting, the call was hung up. I called back…and same thing. I got the impression he was just hanging up on purpose, but perhaps they were having phone line trouble.
later that day, I called up jitensha studio and ordered their flat bar…no problems w/ ordering or customer service. hiroshi was great and very accommodating w/ my questions. the bars were a higher quality, nitto-made product compared to the VO bar…and pretty much the same price. shipping was fast. no complaints.
I like how “rings are out of true, recommended BB isn’t correct, and hardware needs better QC” translates to “yo, dis sux.”
I do kind of wonder sometimes how people perceive the age/experience/knowledge of this web site. It certainly doesn’t initially come off as pro, but lots of people here have more bike geek experience than lots of other places online. In this thread we’ve referenced a few brands that might not be direct competitors, but are certainly some of the only producers that produce possibly competitive products. We ARE quite obviously considering purchasing VO products, and in many cases, following through, and being happy with them.
They just (literally as I typed this) posted, “stoners usu are not that vicious. I was never like that in my stoner 20’s. It’s like a bike centric 4chan”
Edit: There’s mention of many of us purchasing lots of VO parts in this thread, even those giving bad reviews are still talking about things they like, do they really want to loose us as customers?
Wow name-calling, I really want to spend more money with them now. For the record amz and I have a few hundred dollars of their products on three of our bicycles.
Eh, I don’t take it personally, I’m just baffled as hell. I have a 30mm setback for my Brooks and I’ve got no issue with the company, I just really don’t understand where the left field assumption that we’re all stoners came from, or why they’re taking this so personally
What’s amazing is that he’s willing to reference us on his Twitter thing, but totally unwilling to come on here and actually respond to the issues that some of our members have with his products.
I’d understand if this thread were like some of the other immature lol cat bullshit that’s posted on other parts of the website, but we seem to actually be acting serious for once.
I wrote the forum post which you tweeted about. I had full intentions on calling you guys to voice my concerns but work has been so busy the last few weeks I haven’t had a chance.
There are two issues that are raised on TarckBike that I feel should concern you. The first is the issue I experienced with the cranks. Between the bottom bracket and out of true big ring I had very serious issues with the installation and use of the cranks. They are, in my opinion, not as nice as advertised. The situation severely hurt my opinion on the quality and design of your products and makes me hesitant to buy anything beyond your seat posts and stems, which are very decent components for the money. The second, and I feel the much larger issue for VO, is the perceived quality of your products. You offer a lot of speciality products at very reasonable prices so people aren’t expecting them to be the absolute best but I have heard several people say they feel your products are poor clones of the originals that have inherent design flaws. Your perceived quality issue does not just reside on TB as I have seen numerous complaints regarding your racks among the basket bike and rando crowd on sffixed.com as well as other forums.
I would be happy to give you any further input you need on the VO products I have first hand experience with as I really like the ideology of what you are trying to do, I just feel the execution has been flawed at times.
I like how “rings are out of true, recommended BB isn’t correct, and hardware needs better QC” translates to “yo, dis sux.”
I do kind of wonder sometimes how people perceive the age/experience/knowledge of this web site. It certainly doesn’t initially come off as pro, but lots of people here have more bike geek experience than lots of other places online. In this thread we’ve referenced a few brands that might not be direct competitors, but are certainly some of the only producers that produce possibly competitive products. We ARE quite obviously considering purchasing VO products, and in many cases, following through, and being happy with them.
They just (literally as I typed this) posted, “stoners usu are not that vicious. I was never like that in my stoner 20’s. It’s like a bike centric 4chan”
Edit: There’s mention of many of us purchasing lots of VO parts in this thread, even those giving bad reviews are still talking about things they like, do they really want to loose us as customers?[/quote]
They are just mad that we have sweet conversion fixies that are made from coveted Trek 720s that we hacked the braze-ons off of.
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bringing balance into the sphere of unbalance one ball bearing at a time…